


disintegration

by euphoriaspill



Series: moment of truth [1]
Category: On My Block (TV)
Genre: Brothers, Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Drug Addiction, Father-Son Relationship, Gangs, Gen, Harm to Children, Loss of Parent(s), Pre-Canon, Strangulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-04 19:15:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21202682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/euphoriaspill/pseuds/euphoriaspill
Summary: The first time their father raises a hand to Cesar is the last. Oscar makes sure of it.





	disintegration

**Author's Note:**

> technically this could fit into my drabble collection, but i decided against it because it got way longer than i intended lol, and i started going into oscar's relationship with cuchillos too... the tags should make it obvious, but there's a lot of explicit dv here, including against a v young child, so be careful when reading!!

Oscar knows something’s wrong when he gets home from school and Cesar’s not at the door to greet him. Kid usually sprints to it like a puppy when he hears Diego’s car pull up, babbling about whatever cartoons he’s been watching or the sandwich Mami made him or the half-remembered fragment of a dream he had last night, tugging at Oscar’s sleeve, but today the house is eerily still, Cesar nowhere to be found. “C?” he calls out, a knot of worry twisting in his stomach as he walks into the room they share. Doesn’t spot him at first, until he notices the curled-up ball at the corner of their puzzle-piece carpet.

Oscar throws his backpack to the side, crouches low next to him. He looks like he’s been crying on and off for hours, his face blotchy and red, snot dripping down his nose and crusting around his nostrils; he flings himself at him, settles in his arms. “What’s good, _nene_?” he asks a shade above a whisper, as Cesar clutches his tank in his tiny fists. “What happened?”

He prays it’s something stupid, a squabble with Cuchillos’s kids, even as trivial as Mami giving him the wrong juice box at lunch, but the way Cesar trembles, like a moth beating at the walls of a jar… he knows. “Papi’s mad,” he hiccups, “he said I’m a lil’ _puto_—“

“You’re not.” He rubs the skin on his back where his shirt rides up, feels the heat coming off a raised welt; bile immediately sloshes up and singes his throat. “C. Did he hit you?”

It’s a pointless question, one he already knows the answer to, he’s had wounds like that more times than he can count. He doesn’t wait for Cesar to say anything before he flips him over, yanks his shirt up all the way, really wants to hurl when he sees the damage; kid looks like he’s just been jumped in, bruises in dark clusters surrounded by red belt marks. Fuck, he can’t even begin to imagine what Cesar could've done—

but he feels a deep, corrosive anger building up, acid eating away at iron. Leaving behind something raw and rusted-over and ugly, something new. 

Dad’s sitting in front of the TV, a beer in hand, the model of a sitcom father; he’s calm now, all relaxed. Turns to Oscar like nothing’s wrong, like he didn’t find his brother sobbing on the floor. “Hey, _mijo_,” he says, his gaze already flickering back to the screen. “You just get home from school?”

Tension crackles inside Oscar’s skull, like the air before a lightning storm. “Why’s Cesar crying?”

“_No sé_,” he says. “He’s three, kid’s always crying over_ nada_. Ask your moms.”

“I ain’t stupid.” His daddy’s got mean eyes, as dark as his, a mean mouth too when it slides into a smirk. “Did you beat on him? He got marks all over.”

“Maybe I did,” he shrugs, like it meant nothing, and maybe it ain’t shit to him for real. What’s taking your belt to a toddler when you’ve put cigarettes out on your wife’s arms, knocked your other son into a radiator? When you first shot a man to death at thirteen, back in TJ? “Needs his ass beat more, he don’t never listen when I tell him shit. Guess he got that from you.”

Oscar jumps him— barely tops five feet, can’t lift more than forty pounds no matter how much his _primos_ clown him, but he jumps him all the same. “You..._ puto pendejo_,” he screeches, which is about the worst phrase he can come up with, uselessly tries to bang his fists into his chest, his jaw, anywhere on him he can reach. It’s a short struggle, his dad lets him wear himself out as he thrashes in his grip on his upper arms, and it ends when he reaches up and breaks his beer bottle over Oscar’s head.

The smell hits him before the pain, a musky ammonia reek an inch away from piss— Dad’s thrown bottles at him, but he’s never connected, Oscar’s real good at ducking. “You think you some big man now?” he asks, breathing hard, the jagged base still clutched in his hand. Repeats, “_te sientes como un hombre?_“, like the words will somehow carry more truth in Spanish. Oscar blinks blood out of his eyes, is shocked to find that he can still see.

“Don’t touch him,” he sputters like he has any power here, scoots away from him on his ass. “Hit me if you want. Don’t fucking hit him.”

Dad crawls over to him— it reminds Oscar of when he was Cesar’s age, the times he’d play on the floor with him, his laugh deep and rolling as he pushed toy cars around. He isn’t afraid at first, because time moves in slow motion, flows like syrup— he just feels pressure from the fist wrapped around his throat, before the next breath doesn’t come and then the next and he starts to flop uselessly. “I could kill you, _mijo_,” Dad says. “Ain’t nobody here to stop me.”

Oscar can’t beg. Even if he opens his mouth, the words will never leave it. But he lets him go, after a few seconds, before his vision can swim and blur to the point where darkness would be a relief, laughs at him. His dad’s laughter is the sound Oscar hates the most in the world, he thinks, it’s always at someone’s expense. “You don’t like me much, do you? _A mí tampoco me caía bien mi papá— _spoiled asses. You never would’ve survived in his house.”

Torn between pity and the realization that he’s pissed himself a little, Oscar clenches his fists again, he’ll keep fighting until he’s down for the count altogether. But Dad’s already gotten up, looks out the glass door of the patio. “You want me gone?” he asks, his next laugh shaky and far away. “I’m gonna do you a favor, tell you the truth for once. I wanna be gone too.”

Oscar doesn’t say anything profound, the last time he sees him, the crotch of his pants wet and blood seeping down his scalp and God, it hurts to swallow like someone’s still got their hand around his throat; he doesn’t beg him to stay or flip him the bird, lies there supine while Dad walks out the door. When he hears his Saab rev up, the ride he told Oscar he’d teach him to drive soon, he tries to tell himself it might not be for real. He didn’t take any of his _mierda_, just his wallet and his keys. He went to go get cigarettes, maybe, he’ll be back—

He stays there for what feels like an hour, too stunned to move, before he sits up and almost vomits from how fast he does it. He breathes hard, static gathering at the corners of his vision. Then he fishes his Blackberry from his pocket, the one Cuchillos gave him for emergencies— he’d thought he was _balling_, shown it off to all his _primos_ when he first got it— and dials his number.

“_Hola_,” Cuchillos says boredly, when he first picks up. “Spooky, I told you not to call unless some shit went down, I know_ tú lo sabes_—“

“I think Dad’s bounced.”

* * *

Moms is sober for once when she gets home from cleaning houses— sits at the kitchen table and picks shards of glass out of Oscar’s head with a pair of tweezers, Cesar tugging at her slacks and going _Mami Mami Mami_ every ten seconds, too young to understand, while Cuchillos explains the situation. “You tell me, if he shows back up here,” he says shortly, his hand on his piece. “Or if he calls. Or if he sends a fucking postcard from the Bahamas. I ain't joking.”

She's never hit them, except a few sad attempts at wielding a chancla when Oscar was real young— but she doesn’t have to, her words can be just as sharp, and sometimes Oscar thinks he’s more afraid of her after a couple shots of whiskey than he ever was of Dad. She doesn’t speak at all, though, to either him or Cuchillos, before taking a bottle of grocery store wine out of the fridge. _Too pretty and too young and too flighty for her own good, that Isabel Diaz, a real _presumida; she's always acted like a disgraced princess, wanted to be in Cuchillos's wife Vicky's place, not stuck scrubbing floors with callused hands and an ugly bruise on her left cheekbone. Maybe she’s glad he’s gone now too, without her having to do anything about it.

He escorts Cuchillos out into the foyer— it seems like the polite thing to do, he’s operating on autopilot at this point. “Next time I see your dad, I’m gonna put a bullet between his eyes,” Cuchillos says, tilts Oscar’s chin up so he has to look at him, at the teardrop and cobwebs inked into his face. “_Comprendes_?”

Oscar knows it’s because he cut and run, not because of the bruises starting to bloom around his neck. But he still launches himself into his chest and starts crying like he’s Cesar’s age, ashamed of himself yet too far gone to stop, and Cuchillos doesn’t push him away. “‘S’okay, _mijo_,” he says, his fingers in his hair. “Maybe I’ll let you do the honors.”


End file.
